The Count stopped as if for a reply, and his companion answered, "Speak, speak, my Lord Count! Your message shall not fail to reach him."
"Well then, Armand," replied the nobleman, "tell Keroual this for me: first, that I know him--that I recognised him the moment he spoke when last we met; but that having some regard for him, I do not intend to take any advantage whatever of that knowledge to his prejudice, although he be engaged in wrong and unlawful deeds. However, I came here to meet him, in order to reason with him on his conduct, for he is a good and a gallant soldier, and would now have been an officer--for I recommended him for advancement--had it not been for that plundering of the priory of St. Amand, which was thrown in my teeth by Monsieur de Louvois whenever I mentioned his name."
"If Louvois had been in it," replied his companion, "it would not have escaped half as well as it did; for I think, according to the very doctrines of their popish church, the good act of burning one Louvois would be quite enough to obtain pardon for the sin of burning a whole score of monks along with him. But what were you going to say farther, sir?"
"Why, to Brown Keroual," continued the Count, "I was going to say, that he is engaged in a matter contrary to all law and order, heading a band of robbers which must be----"
"I beg your pardon, sir," interrupted Herval somewhat impatiently, "not robbers! If you please, a band of chauve-souris. They rob no man: they only plunder the enemy; and let me tell you, my Lord Count, that there is many a man more or less joined with that band, who would just as soon think of robbing another as you would.--Has any thing been asked for the ring, though it was the ring of a Papist? Was not the money that was taken from you restored?"
"It was," replied the Count; "but we must not be too nice about our terms, Herval. I do not know any law, human or divine, that allows a man to pick and choose at his own will and pleasure whom he will rob, and whom he will murder."
"Ay, my noble Lord," answered the man, getting warm; "but there is a law of nature, which, after all, is a law of God, and which not only justifies but requires us to destroy him who would destroy us; and, whether it be straightforwardly that he is seeking our destruction, or by cunning and crooked paths, it matters not, we have a right to prevent him by every means in our power, and if we catch hold of him, to knock him on the head like a viper or any other noxious vermin."
"In all cases but direct attack," answered the Count, "civil society gives our defence into the hands of the law."
"But when the law and its ministers are leagued with the destroyers, with the real plunderers, with the real disturbers of the public peace," exclaimed the man vehemently, "we must make a new law for ourselves, and be its officers also."
The Count did not interrupt him, as he was very well pleased to be made acquainted clearly with all the views and opinions of that body of men whom Armand Herval might be supposed to represent; and the soldier went on with great volubility, and some eloquence, to defend the right of resistance with all the well-known arguments upon the subject, which have been repeated and combated a thousand times; but he came not a bit nearer than any who had gone before him to the real question at issue, namely, where the duty of submission ceased and the right of resistance began. We must remember that not only the higher orders, but also the lower classes of French Protestants were at that time much more generally enlightened and accustomed to the use of their own reason, than the Catholics, and the natural consequence of any attempt to oppress them, was to render such arguments as those used by Herval, very common amongst them. Neither was the Count de Morseiul prepared to oppose the general scope of the man's reasoning, though he was determined to resist the practical misapplication of it, which was then actively going on in the province.